Cleaning Up
by SentimentalDefect
Summary: "It's funny, she thinks, how rapidly a place that once felt like home can feel like a tomb for something that never quite existed in the first place." Post SOT, Sherlock is not dealing well with John's absence. Mrs Hudson picks up the pieces.


It's very nearly 4:00am when she wakes.

After all the carelessness with her boys, what with midnight cases and unexpected experiments, unpredictable fires and the all-too-frequent bang of a firearm, she has grown accustomed to spastic sleep patterns, so the sudden wail that wakes her in the semi-darkness of dawn is hardly surprising.

Still, since The Incident, (since that's what they're calling it now, and by "they" she means "herself", because Sherlock won't talk about it at all, and John tosses about far angrier phrases like "betrayal" and "murder") but since then, the flat has been much more quiet.

Sherlock rarely leaves the bedroom, and when he does he's never home for more than an hour at a time, and John- well, John hasn't been about much since The Incident.

As she's padding across the hallway, slippered feet cautious against the carpet, she's very nearly convinced herself that perhaps it is John, making that awful sound downstairs, and part of her wants to give him a squeeze just to tell him she's glad to have him home.

It simply isn't home without the both of them.

Both her boys.

Together.

The door to 221B is open, and she hesitates only slightly in the doorway, ever cautious of something ominous lurking in the shadows. She pauses softly, listening intently, but she hears nothing more, aside from the strange wailing sound from before, muffled slightly. It has grown from the whimpering of before, suddenly quieter, more stifled, yet infinitely more pressing, desperate, feral. Given the distinctive lack of any assassins (or John, for that matter) awaiting her in the living room, that leaves only only logical source of the sound, and that is Sherlock.

The two little syllables pound in time with her heart as she pushes toward the bathroom, down the hallway, not bothering to turn on lights in favor of speed, follows the haunting wail down the hall to the sliver of light under the bathroom door.

"Woo hoo." She taps on the wood twice. "Sherlock, dear?" She doesn't bother to wait for a response, simply turns the knob and lets herself in.

The bathroom is cold and bright, tile glistening aggressively up at her as Sherlock takes her in tiredly, limbs clinging weakly to the porcelain of the toilet. His hair is a wreck, face glossed over in a sheen of sweat. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, almost dopey, and they take several moments to focus on her frame in the doorway.

"Mrs. Hudson—" He opens his mouth again and then closes in very quickly, jerking away to vomit violently into the open arms of the violet bowl.

"Oh dear—" She closes the distance between them in just a few steps, not caring if she is tossed aside or rejected by the detective, and frankly, given by the state of him, he doesn't appear to be in much of a position to resist.

"You know you can't do this to yourself Sherlock, not again. Oh— you're running a fever."

_"__Again," _She reminds herself, _"he's running a fever again." _Last week it had been the flu. Three weeks before that a touch of pneumonia, which despite her best efforts had not kept him from The Work, not kept him home, safe and warm, but rather ended with a broken wrist and black eye on her doorstep the next morning, silent and bitter about a matter he refused to share.

In the beginning he had always come around.

He always stumbled to her door at some ungodly hour, soaked in rain or mud, often scratched or ill but otherwise compliant, always willing to put up a front. He would grumble through her ministrations, insult her drapes or book selection, but always stay for a biscuit or two, always left her with a kiss on the cheek and a wan smile for the books.

Now he was withdrawn. Quiet. Feral. He stayed upstairs for days at a time, then disappeared for nights on end, wandering the streets like a stray. The flat had morphed into a wasteland, trash and dishes littering the counters, each room its own little island, its own planet. A sea of sheets. Mountains of newspapers. Towering cities of malaise.

"What happened this time?" She finally manages to ask, hand still hovering above the detective's back like a nervous bird.

Sherlock says nothing, just jerks underneath her firm hand, back spasming as he heaves, again and again until the heaving turns into coughing and he slumps back against the wall. There's vomit on his shirt, his face positively green and now shining with sweat, and when he breathes, she can hear a distinct rattle in his chest. For such a young man he suddenly looks ancient, feeble, and ill. It makes her heart hurt a little.

"Oh dear." She clucks disapprovingly, soothing a hand across his brow and frowning. "Let's get you up. What would John say, hm? If he saw you like this, not eating, not sleeping, running around in the rain…"

"John isn't here." Sherlock says suddenly. He swipes clumsily at his mouth, and his whole body seems to sag under the weight of the world. "Not anymore."

She doesn't know what to say to that, so they both do their best to focus on getting Sherlock up onto his feet. His legs are boneless, fingers clinging to the edge of the tub as he shivers violently. She shushes him sweetly, takes a firm hold of one boney elbow and guides him toward the bedroom.

The bedroom is, if possible, even worse than the rest of the house. Cigarettes litter the floor like flower petals, little round burns visible in the woodwork. She doesn't even want to consider the state of the sheets.

"Couch it is." She chirps, doing her best to sound pleasant, even as Sherlock trembles under her hands and they veer off course into the living room.

It's funny, she thinks, how rapidly a place that once felt like home can feel like a tomb for something that never quite existed in the first place. There are little slivers of John here and there, but only if she knows where to look. A single slipper in the corner. A little marmalade spoon in the jam jar, head peeking out the wrong direction. The most obvious piece is rather the lack thereof, all the negative space where John used to fill in seats and against furniture. The dusty square on the carpet where his chair used to be. She almost asks what he's done with it, but then thinks better and carries on sounding motherly for the both of their sakes.

"Shower, clothes, bed." She instructs him, handing over a neat pile of pajamas and pointing towards the bathroom. His eyes focus, and he nods thickly, shuffling obediently toward the open door, leaving her flustered at the unusual cooperation.

Sherlock was always such a moody creature, prone to emotion the way the sky is prone to rain; in great unexpected bursts, and always when you least expect. But, she supposes its best to take it while she can, and if the shower takes a suspiciously long time to turn on, or the water runs for a rather above-average cycle, she lets it go. She hates to watch him wallow, hates seeing the dark fingers of depression close around him, but the disappearance of Doctor Watson has left them both a little breathless, and little lost in the dark of the unknown.

_"__He left us both," _she wants to remind him sometimes, _"I loved him too you know." _She knows it isn't the same sort of love (but really what does anyone know of the love for which Sherlock Holmes is capable?) but still sometimes she wants to remind him of their mutual tie to John, the same hungry desire to get him back.

"There's no shampoo."

His sudden reappearance startles her, wiping her mind blank of any and all context. "What's that, love?" She asks, trying not to sink when she sees his scrawny chest, his bony elbows sharpened by neglect.

Sherlock stares at her, frowning. "The shampoo. All the soaps. He took them when he moved out." He stares blankly at the wall behind her, mouth tight and frightened, like he's seen a ghost.

He looks more like a child than she's ever seen before, eyes rimmed red, curls greasy against his too-big tee shirt and sweats. He blinks quickly, an animal caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. The words tumble out so quickly she almost misses them.

"Do you think he's coming back?"

He watches her, eyes wide and pleading as the words hang like smoke between them. Suffocating.

Unbidden, the carefully controlled composure he has fought so hard to retain begins to crack at the edges. The smallest hairline of a break just at the corner of his mouth, a tremble of doubt.

"Do you think John will come back?" He repeats, this time louder, still wavering.

He blinks again, a nervous tick, blue eyes suddenly heavy as they flutter across her face, brain whirring into overdrive as he pieces together her sad eyes and her worried lip, and everything he always knew about them comes crashing down around their ears.

"No," she murmurs, not meeting his eyes, "I don't think he is."

"I don't think so either." He whispers softly.

She holds him tight against her, ignoring the dampness on her shoulder as he clings to her like a life raft, fingers desperately twined into her dress, her hair, her neck. He lets out an agonized wail, something raw and revenged and utterly tortured, and she rocks him in her arms, tears steadily cascading down her own cheeks in time to their shared heartbeat.

"He's gone," she thinks, "John's gone."


End file.
